


The Exception

by galacticbasic



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Bounty Hunters, Captivity, Din Djarin is a Father, Fatherhood, Flashbacks, Gen, Identity Issues, Interrogation, Memory Loss, Mind Games, Mind Manipulation, Minor Character Death, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Helmet Removal, The Mandalorian Makes a Choice, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:00:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25016635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticbasic/pseuds/galacticbasic
Summary: The Mandalorian finds himself bound on an unfamiliar ship as the captive of a ruthless—and telepathic—bounty hunter. Manipulated, interrogated, and tortured, Din Djarin attempts to retain both his dignity and his sanity. What will he sacrifice in order to survive?
Comments: 8
Kudos: 70





	The Exception

_I think I’ll keep it. As a trophy._

It echoes in his ears, through his head, a slithering voice in the dark.

With bounty hunters seeking him out at every turn, each refuel and pit stop, every innocent planet he’s stumbled across in search of some semblance of safety—the enemies have been inevitable since the beginning. Even more so since taking on the Child, and what was once a treasured prize is now part of his clan, half of it. This Mandalorian is a wanted man, but he never expected to be a found one. 

The memory of his capture is neither new nor old; still it seeps to the surface like blood welling up from a wound. His ravaged ship, pursued somewhere into the far reaches of the Outer Rim, aiming at a planet the security of which he could not ascertain before the computer shorted out and the spinning atmosphere broke into pieces on the viewscreen—and then the rubber scent of burning electrical, and abrupt darkness. Before that, Dune—he had run across her again, out near Dagobah, but she couldn’t begin to protect the Child for long without his help, without a ship to speak of. No sense asking her why she wasn’t still on Navarro working for Karga. Unsure where he’d landed—or if he’d landed at all—but in the knowledge his charge is safe. For now. Perhaps still with her, if he is lucky.

“Speak,” the voice commands, audibly this time, less a nagging ache behind his eyes and more in front of him. In the blackness, the Mandalorian can almost pinpoint from where the sound emanates. An indistinct energy bites at his armor, oscillating through his muscles, weakening him. 

“Who are you?” The question vibrates. The Mandalorian blinks, squeezing hazy drops from his eyes in an attempt to clear his vision. “What do you want?” 

There is no way to assess this situation. No information. Nothing to see. The energy in his body tightens like a vice, but besides it no pain courses through him. Odd, for a man who’s just crash-landed, to feel no injuries.

“What does _anyone_ want?” the voice hums, close behind him now. The footsteps make no noise—or else they have no feet. A breath pulses on his neck, only a little exposed. “Information.”

Maybe the visor is in blind mode. The Mandalorian reaches up to clear it, but his hands stop moving at his wrists. His toes won’t even curl. So his suspicions are correct; he is a prisoner here—restrained in something invisible, imperceptible, unsure even of his position. Dizzy. Perhaps drugged. 

“What kind of information?” It is as gruff as he can muster. A surge of panic breaks through him momentarily—is the helmet on? 

A hand traces his collar, thumbing beneath the chinpiece to stroke his jaw. So it is on. 

The fingers are unbelievably cold. 

“You are in distress, Mandalorian,” the voice returns. “But I am honorable. I know of the creed your people hold in highest esteem. If you are cooperative, no harm will come to your… integrity.” The fingertips draw away, the atmosphere around him thickening, freezing. “Now… where is the Child?”

“Did Moff Gideon send you?” He focuses on that, not on Cara, not on the Child. A lingering fear that if he thinks—

_The Child, Mandalorian. Before I use force._

“What are you?” A bounty hunter, either working for Gideon or in some kind of competition. As for species—he wracks his brains; low-light, telepathic, ice-cold? It comes up blank. 

No, not—blank. Occluded. He can’t clear his head. Maybe it’s this damn current flooding him.

“Is your knowledge of history so faint?” A little light begins to filter in from somewhere unseen, a glimmer of colorless eyes staring at him, bluish skin, hair so white it is almost clear beneath the black hood they wear. “Or perhaps I should... en _light_ en you.”

Little of their kind is known to the Mandalorians; a nighttime planet four thousand parsecs from Mandalore, interested in seclusion and subterfuge and galactic treason. Most of their interactions with outsiders take place in the form of forced negotiations and clever assassination plots. Bounty hunters of this type are rare, if not completely nonexistent. After the Clone Wars—their presence has been all but invisible for the past thirty years. 

One of the Shadow People. An—Umbaran. 

“Very good,” the Umbaran purrs, as soon as he recognizes the thought. “But I’m getting impatient. Time is of the essence, Mandalorian.”

They are behind him, undoing the clasps of his gloves, tracing down his bare palms. The Mandalorian’s breath quickens in his throat, chest beginning to strain against the unknown equipment. He’s been in sticky situations before, but never like this. The element of surprise is usually _his_ element. 

But it could be worse—it could always be worse. The remnants of the Empire could be at his throat right now, turning him over to a Mind Flayer or something of the sort, making this harder than it has to be for him to escape. Whatever Karga said about the Flayer, the reported exaggerations of its power—well, Mando is mentally competent enough to resist this, at least, this gentle questioning; even if the speaking directly into his head is a strange sensation. Hell, maybe this is the Mind Flayer of legend, minus the rumored tentacles and general facelessness. Or this could be worse. 

_I wanted you conscious._

It makes him flinch, like his brain is squirming around inside his skull. The Umbaran roughly unstraps his armor, sloughing it onto the floor like a husk. The chestplate. The shoulder pieces. His belt and weapons have been removed and dismantled, though he cannot remember when, or how he knows, just that they do not clank to the metal grating beneath him like the rest. The Mandalorian has not been this underdressed before another being since the Armorer reforged his beskar. This is being stripped, dishonored—yet he cannot let himself focus on it. Instead he tunes into the distant dripping of pipes and coolant; the hum of electricity. Whatever he’s strapped into has to have a power source. 

But he is well and truly trapped, the feeling long put aside, ever since his own parents tried to keep him safe in that bunker as a child. Trapped, the droid army closing in around him with nowhere to run. If the Mandalorians hadn’t come to his aid, he would have been as dead as the rest—as dead as he soon enough might be. 

But he is a Mandalorian, now, he is one of them. One of the rescuers. 

The Umbaran steps behind him, long fingers typing into what must be a control panel. At first it seems a light has turned on, white and glaring in his eyes, but what accompanies it is not sight—it is searing through him, blinding, much how he imagines the shock-pulse on his Amban rifle to be. It switches off, leaving him convulsing against the table, heaving for his breath. If this is torture—if this is a weapon—it can be turned. He only has to stall enough to figure out _how_.

The switch flips back on. The sting intensifies, the Umbaran either ramping it up or the Mandalorian caving, letting his nerves take the brunt so his mind can work harder. 

_The Child, Mandalorian. Who has it?_

So his ship—or whatever remains of it—has been searched. In his mind it is crashing into the mountainous terrain of the planet beneath, breaking apart on jutting rocks, its pieces boiling in molten volcanoes. Mustafar—perhaps, the planet of heat and obsidian. But if the Razor Crest had entered its atmosphere, Mando would surely be a wisp of ash by now, and the ship long gone. It damns him that he can’t remember, but it is something to arrest him from the present. The Child. Who has him. 

“This is the way,” he hisses, the inside of his helmet fogging with warmth.

Sweat is pouring down his temples, his throat aching and teeth grinding down. His limbs hang heavy against the table, contracting muscles spasming with pain as sharp as spikes. But the room is still around him, silent save for the buzzing of the equipment. 

The Umbaran slips something from their sleeve, a dappled metallic object glinting in the dimness, and rakes it through the first layer of his clothes. They run their curved nails over the thinner layer beneath, soaked and sticky against the skin of his chest. 

“Why—why are you doing that?” the Mandalorian sighs as this unusual bounty hunter finishes cutting off his gear. It’s going to be expensive to replace, and impossible to repair with the way they’re hacking through it, strokes slow and aimless.

_It’s amusing, I suppose._ The clear eyes glimmer as they meet his visor, a pale intelligence piquing his interest as the Umbaran’s thoughts thrust deeper into his head, spreading out, making themselves comfortable. 

“I _would_ rather see your face,” the Umbaran smiles, drawing back their hood a little as they come closer. “But then, I am fascinated by humans. The fluctuations in your physiology when you lie, for example. It is easier to sense when you are... exposed.”

The Mandalorian winces as the knife tip grazes his stomach, glancing down, and back up. The Umbaran is at his helmet, their face brushing the cool beskar, white eyelashes fluttering at the t-shape of his visor. Their pale tongue darting out to wet their lips, breath obscuring the sharpness of their features. In another instant the Umbaran drops to their knees, carefully unclicking the cuffs at his ankles. 

_Don’t kick me. You’ll regret it._

“What are you—” Mando stops himself, resigned, as the Umbaran begins to loosen his boots and slide them off, carefully pairing them beside his dangling feet. “Really?”

“Tell me about the Child,” they hum, aloud for the first time. “You’ve had enough of a break.”

“He’s green,” the Mandalorian huffs. “He eats frogs.”

“And who is taking care of this green frog-eater?”

At least when the machine is on he doesn’t have to think of something to say, or not say, or think to distract himself. If this Umbaran knows that someone has the Child—that he did not perish in the scorching wastelands of Mustafar or the endless swamps of Dagobah or the frozen seas of Orto or wherever in the galaxy the Razor Crest plummeted to earth—they must know he is in the charge of another. The worming way they speak to him, intent on an answer, gnaws beneath his skin like a parasite. 

Her face flashes through his brain before he can stop it, and the Umbaran snatches the memory, cracking it wide open. She is arm wrestling him in the Ugnaught’s hut on Arvala-7, a grin of concentration on her face. She is winning, just barely, a competitive twinge in Mando’s chest and a laughing chastisement at himself for losing. She is on Navarro with Greef Karga, accepting his offer and parting with her friend, her warm hard arms folded, her strong handshake and her teal armor and belly filled with ambition and drive. Looking into the eyes she has never seen, and letting him go.

Finding her again had been a surprise. The memories splinter—they are together in a cantina, sharing a drink they shouldn’t have, Mando sipping as he can beneath his helmet. They are on Sorgan, waist-deep in a krill pond, wondering in the dark and the muck if their plan will succeed. They are facing Moff Gideon—he won’t let the Umbaran see—but the voice rings through his head, he can’t stop them hearing it—

_Carasynthia Dune of Alderaan._

“No,” he chokes, hands making themselves into fists, nails cutting into his palms. 

“Oh, yes,” the Umbaran sings, tracing over their prisoner’s rough-hewn form, from the hollow of his throat to the soft dark hair below his navel. “Humans are such a _naive_ species. It never gets old.”

The Mandalorian is shivering in the absence of the electric heat that should be shocking through him. After hours of limited success, the Umbaran takes their leave of him, showering promises to return with vengeance, break into the hidden memories he cannot let unravel. The more he represses them, the more they bubble to the surface, lingering beneath his conscious control. The last of his shirts are in tattered strips on the grated floor, a heavy testament to his lack of ingenuity once discouraged. His biggest advantages have always been stopping these instances _before_ they occur. Powerlessness suits him about as well as nudity—that is, in an aggressive, shameful kind of way. 

The Mandalorian Code has no exceptions—and it is a wonder the Umbaran has not yet decided to disgrace him. 

***

When consciousness finds him once again, the Mandalorian has a needle in his arm and the Umbaran caressing gently the patterned leather at the outside of his thigh. The helmet rests heavily on his lolling head, a comfort and a burden. 

“You _have_ to have a droid,” the Mandalorian rasps, jolting his leg in an attempt to make the hand recede. “Why do this yourself?”

The Umbaran slides out the needle, setting it down somewhere beside him that rattles, like a tray laden with equipment. His vision won’t reach far enough, eyes landing instead on the pallid face before him, long features distinct and inquisitive, lighter patches of white dappling the blue-gray cheeks he can barely make out. But his sight has adjusted to the near-pitch darkness in the hours he’s spent here. 

Their thin lips twitch, curling at the periwinkle edges. “You’d rather be interrogated by a droid?”

_Droids are less irritating._

They smile at him, shaking their head. “You've mastered concentrating your thoughts, Mandalorian. My usual bounties have a harder time defying me.”

“What’s in the syringe?” 

Gauzy warmth is spreading through his limbs, the words beginning to slur together. The Umbaran palms his straining bicep, a curious combination of cool touch and the heat of his skin. 

_Just relax._

“Stop it,” he falters, the strange sensation passing in waves. The Umbaran glances over him, their lashes fluttering, incandescent eyes locked on his visor. 

_You want to help me._

“I don’t.” The Mandalorian grunts through his nose, the Umbaran’s grip tightening, friction making his heart pound. But his captor is frighteningly beautiful in the dimness, all fangs and cold unrelenting softness, filling his mind restrained here with dark fantasies and imagined intimacies, what he wants, what he’s desired for so long. A body to press against his in the dark. For someone to see him, his face, his eyes. To know him. 

How badly he wanted to remain on Sorgan. 

There is a grimy little mirror on the Razor Crest where he takes the helmet off, washing his face; drawing his fingers over the ridges and lines of his forehead and jaw, each new mark of age on his cheeks and the tired circles beneath his eyes. The Mandalorian remembers his face, as well as he can in the distorted reflection. None are left to remember it except for him, and so he memorizes it delicately, as often as he bathes, grasping to make up for something lost. Something he perhaps never had. The Razor Crest is gone, demolished, burnt away; but here he stands inside it, the likeness in the mirror grim and burdened down with knowledge he does not possess. 

_You need to tell me._

The Mandalorian works alone, an outcast, a bounty hunter—how did he manage to get caught up in this? When he decided for himself that saving this particular life, the life of a child, above all the others he’s killed or let die or let suffer—was right? Morally? Important somehow, that he not fall into the wrong hands, enslaved to a regime which would likely use him to dominate the galaxy? 

_It isn’t your burden._

A vicious instinct ignites within him. Dune cannot keep the Child safe alone, and he has given her up, betrayed her, abandoned them both. Of course it is his burden; to fight, to protect, to carry out his mission. For he too had been a child, once, when the Mandalorians saved him, raised him, taught him the way. There is nothing he would not give to erase his confessions, rectify his wrongdoings, bring back the ones he cannot. But this is his life. This is his choice. This is his _son—_

_Show me._

This is the instant that cannot be undone. The helmet clatters to the ground and rolls to a stop, the Umbaran’s foot catching it and toeing it to sit next to his boots. Up until this moment, the Mandalorian has not known what it is to be naked. The clear sight of his captor lifting a hand, twisting a strand of his sweat-damp hair behind his ear, coming close enough their gazes lock like nemeses and lovers—it strangles him with the unspoken dread of something about to die. 

They kiss him, frozen, intoxicating, and he leans into their mouth with the abandon of a wounded X-wing plunging from space. His weight hangs from the table, the cruel straps pressing bruises into his bare skin, but it doesn’t matter like this matters. If it came to it, the end of his life as a Mandalorian, a genocide of the self—he always pictured himself buried in his cast-off clothes, the beskar, his rifle in his arms, wasted on some dead-end desert planet or caught in the unavoidable strife of guilds and clans. But with or without the helmet, with or without the Mandalorians, with or without his very life—

Din Djarin is a father.

That, more than this, more than anything. 

The cantina band drawls a jazzy melody as the evening lighting flickers on the green-rusted pazaak tables. The Child is in his arms, squirming for freedom as he chuckles and passes the little gremlin to Cara. She sets him clinging on her shoulder and gives the Mandalorian a reassuring smile, patting his elbow as he tosses a few credits to the barkeep. A few days, she reminds him, while he shakes the nagging at the back of his skull and takes care of the few stragglers who have been tailing him around the system. Forty-eight hours, they decide, no contact. The Child coos as he begins to step away, a three-clawed grasp reaching for his attention. Mando leans on the bar, searching through his pockets, and drops a silver knob into the outstretched hand. 

_If you need us, we’ll be on—_

Cara tucks the Child and his toy into a bag on her hip, downing the last of her drink. The planet of sinkholes and miles-long cliffs jutting into the turquoise sky, cities built from carcasses and cave systems bored into the earthy-tan rock. The Mandalorian lets her go, lets the Child go, lets the memory burn into tepid ash on the scorching obsidian sands of Mustafar, the place where he lies dead, his beskar boiling, the helmet melting into the fiery cavities of his empty bones. This is all he has left, the corpse he has made of himself.

The Umbaran strikes him across the mouth, their knuckles driving into his teeth hard enough to rattle them. Compared to what he has already endured, it is a glancing blow, hardly a blossom of pain or pleasure against his skin. Their eyes burn into his like blue flame, mapping him out, filling him, driving into his innermost parts. Outside of that the world goes gray and numb. 

_—Utapau. I’ll be back soon._

With it Din Djarin is apart, in so many shattered mirror-pieces he will never collect them all to refigure himself. Does the Child see him here, ashamed, in disbelief at his own weakness? Can he be forgiven for his faults of the moment, worse even than losing his status as a Mandalorian? A mission relinquished, his duty left undone? Perhaps the little thing will find others to help him. But never a clan, not until he reclaims his people—and never another father. Not how this Mandalorian has cared for him, failure though he may be. This is the culmination of his life.

Tears spill down his face, an insult, a defeat. 

_It is not your fault._

The Umbaran thumbs away the moisture on his cheeks, and the touch is enough to make him bristle. This hunter, this monster who would bring the Child to harm at the the promise of credits, of beskar, of reward—it is revolting enough to wrestle out the grasp of their mind in his mind, to block out and destroy—too late now to prevent their knowing, but not too late to smother the Umbaran in the backlash. Their satisfied smile, a delicate pride he is inches from crushing, taking back, as they flinch and are driven out. Somehow the restraints cave beneath his strength like snapping wires, breaking twigs, and seem such a mundane obstacle compared to the insurmountable task of pulling apart his will. 

His lungs are filled with fire, a mutinous roar tearing from his throat; and he is fighting against nothing, grief mingled with some relentless instinct turning out his insides. The shackles explode from their welded joints and he is down, an unknown power surging in his drained muscles, barefoot on the floor and swinging. The Umbaran whips out a rat-stunner, but it flings from their outstretched fist unprompted. Before the pair can blink at one another in surprise, they are grappling on the sticky grate, for the weapon, for a death grip, for survival and need. 

The stunner gravitates toward him. It slips into his palm without a thought, as of its own accord, a Force beckoning. The Mandalorian answers—though his body threatens, with sparking vision and half-torn ligaments, to fail him—a stand that even if it kills him will be enough to save the Child. He is pinned, wrists against the metal paneling, one final overpowering effort forcing the Umbaran over, trapped under him struggling in another instant. 

_What a reversal._

The trigger beneath his index finger stutters with tension, the emitter at the Umbaran’s temple crackling with electricity. A fair price to pay for the hell they’d put him through. He discharges it fully, a second time, and the Umbaran’s eyes drop back into their skull rolling like white bearings. Without the helmet, their twitching body so close to his bare face—the reality sets him panting, beneath him the last of the cold electrocuted breath dissolving into the static air. Killing used to be a dignified task. Or perhaps it never was; and this is the truth of it all, unmasked, naked, revealed. 

Another way to survive is all this has ever been. A duty. A conscience. A code.

He collapses onto the floor, letting the stunner fall from his over-tight grip, groaning for his soreness and giddy for his victory. For whatever Force in the universe favored him, his life above indifference, he sighs a quick thanks, and wants to lose consciousness. But in the low light it seems there appears a blue reflection, or hallucination of his weakened brain—standing over him, a familiar stranger, the Child grown and wizened. He blinks, the hazy figure invigorating him enough to keep his eyes open, watchful of the creature watching him. This cannot be death. It is too peaceful.

_More to do, you have. Save him, you must._

The Child. His son. As the image drifts away, the Mandalorian hauls himself from his back, a new necessity within him. Salvaging his clothes and armor may prove difficult, but this lone ship of the Umbaran’s should be enough to get him to Utapau without incident. From there—he swipes idly at the beginnings of his beard—a new kind of mission? A different life from the identity he has built for himself, years in the making? One final duty, perhaps, and then Sorgan, or Corelia, or Taris or something. Din Djarin will find himself again there, in the wash of the krill ponds or the gambling dens of the cantinas, the undercities and the plots they hold in the darkest of their hearts. 

The helmet sits by his boots as he pulls them on, the rest of his beskar secured again to his ragged form. He makes a glance at the dead Umbaran, the only person with whom his face has ever been shared, his mind, his soul—and grimaces. It is a covenant, this death staring at him with eyes unseeing, a testament to his unsheathed shame. A face no one should have seen, that now cannot be hidden beneath the guise of a Mandalorian’s mask without blasphemy against his very nature in the balance. How intimate a moment, how bitter and raw, when they exposed him. 

This mission to return the Child will end. His clan will reduce to a single member, and again he will be alone. Outcast even from those who raised and saved him.

The Mandalorian sighs, swallowing his conscience, and puts on the helmet.


End file.
